The National Music Museum
by Cherie Yurco
Where can you go to see the Rawlins guitar—one of only two surviving guitars made by the Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari; a set of 18th-Century bronze cymbals from Tibet; Bill Clinton’s saxophone; and some of the rarest instruments from around the world? The collection of the National Music Museum on the campus of The University of South Dakota in Vermillion contains more than 13,500 instruments, many of the earliest, best preserved, and historically most important musical instruments surviving today.
Among the National Music Museum’s star collections are: an extraordinary collection of rare keyboards including two 18th-Century grand pianos with the action originally conceived by the piano’s inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori; 17th- and 18th-Century Dutch woodwind instruments; the Witten-Rawlins Collection of early Italian stringed instruments; 450 instruments made in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries by C. G. Conn Company in Elkhart, Indiana; and the Alan Bates Harmonica Collection.
One Man’s Passion for Instruments
The museum began with one man’s private collection of more than 2,500 instruments and related materials. That collector, Arne B. Larson, had a fascination for musical instruments from childhood and in the 1920s began collecting instruments made obsolete by Congressional legislation lowering the pitch standard to A-440.
Larson eventually became head of the music department for Brookings Public School in South Dakota. “His salary went towards household expenses,” says Larson’s son Dr. André P. Larson, the museum’s director. “He earned extra money tuning pianos and with it collected instruments.” He rarely paid more than a few dollars for the instruments, and lovingly repaired and learned to play each.
Arne developed a network of contacts through journals and letters to help him acquire instruments. Travelers and missionaries sent him obscure instruments from Africa, India, and the Orient. “After World War II, rationing continued for seven years,” says André. “My father knew a lot of British collectors. He would send tea and spam in exchange for instruments. I still remember the packages arriving from overseas.”
Search for a Home
By 1964 the Larson home was nearly filled to capacity with musical instruments and Arne began looking for a place to display his instruments and a career change that would involve his “hobby.” He was adamant that the collection remain in the Midwest and when the University of South Dakota invited Arne to come to Vermillion as Professor of Music he accepted. The instruments were brought to Vermillion over the summer, transported in a series of fully-loaded grain trucks.
The National Music Museum officially opened in 1973. André, who shared his father’s passion for the instruments, earned a doctorate in musicology and became the museum’s director. For years Arne’s personality continued to delight visitors to the museum by entertaining them with performances, stories, and tours. He and his wife, Jeanne, officially donated the instrument collection to the state of South Dakota in 1979.
Today visitors can wander through the restored Carnegie library building on a self-guided audio tour that allows them to see, and also to hear, approximately 1,000 instruments on display in nine galleries. Other facilities include a concert hall dedicated to the performance and recording of historical instruments, study areas, a library, a conservation laboratory, and the recently installed D’Angelico/D’Aquisto guitar-making workshop.
The National Music Museum holds many live demonstrations and concerts, as well as brown bag lunch performances from September through June. The museum’s website (www.nmmusd.org) has a calendar of events, a comprehensive list of instruments in the museum, and photos of many of the instruments.
The museum’s location in Vermillion may seem out of the way, but as Arne B. Larson was fond of saying, “It’s no farther from New York to Vermillion than it is from Vermillion to New York.”
Vermillion is easily accessible by major airports—it’s a 45-minute drive from Sioux City, Iowa; 70-minute drive from Sioux Falls, South Dakota; or a two-hour drive from Omaha, Nebraska. The exhibits are open Monday-Saturday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Individuals who want to study items not on display should contact the museum at (605) 677-5306 and make an appointment at least two weeks in advance.
This serpent in D is one of only two known musical instruments created by French jeweler Nicolas Pierre Joly. It was made in 1829. Photo by Bill Willroth Sr.
